


i came along to find a little peace of mind

by javelinas



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Mechanical Inaccuracies, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 14:57:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9077740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/javelinas/pseuds/javelinas
Summary: Too easy. Like it was all meant to be this way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've ever posted. I mean this to be Daryl/Jesus pre-slash, but it doesn't have to be read that way.
> 
> Beta by the awesome pythosis!
> 
> Also I am not great at formatting, so if I goofed my apologies.
> 
> Title from "Weeds or Wildflowers" by Parsonsfield.

The wind whipped Daryl’s greasy, matted hair straight into Jesus’ mouth. Jesus had to keep spitting it out. Daryl didn’t seem to notice.

_Too easy,_ Jesus mused. _This had all been far too easy._

One minute he’d been hopelessly lost inside the Saviors’ massive complex, having to duck out of sight every few feet as another one— _so many, there were so many of them_ —came around a corner. Jesus had seen the thin-faced, dead-eyed man drag Daryl into one of the grey buildings, but he’d had to run seconds later and then his bearings were gone. Lost, completely lost, like Jesus hadn’t been in longer than he could remember.

Then like magic— _too easy_ —Jesus had found Daryl.

Daryl, beating a man to death. Daryl, filthy and faintly shaking, his eyes swollen and purple. 

Daryl, who’d stopped smashing the man’s head at Jesus’ soft words.

Daryl with a key to a bike, who knew how to get out. _Too easy. Like it was all meant to be this way._

This bike they’d stolen from the Saviors had clearly been built for only one to ride. Jesus clung to fistfuls of Daryl’s shirt as they sped away— _away, how had they gotten away?_ Daryl was a solid mass of tensed muscles, like if he dared relax even a fraction the Saviors would be upon them. The vibrations of the bike didn’t seem to reach through his body.

They hadn’t gotten nearly far enough, three miles maybe, easy to spot in an open stretch of roads flanked by fields, when the bike began to cough and sputter and spit black smoke behind them.

“Sons of bitches.” Daryl slowed down.

Jesus yelled in Daryl’s ear over the coughing engine. “We’re fifteen miles out still.”

“I know what’s wrong,” Daryl yelled back. “I can fix it if I can find a place to stop.”

“Not here."

“No shit.”

Jesus looked around. The fields, even overgrown, left them far too exposed. Ahead of them, where the trees closed in again, a tiny garage sat back from the road.

Jesus pointed, over Daryl’s shoulder so Daryl could see. “There!”

Daryl gunned the bike. It shuddered beneath them. “C’mon,” Daryl shouted into the wind. “C’mon!”

—————

By the time Daryl killed the engine in the gravel driveway that led to the garage, both men coughed and squinted against the smoke that spewed from the bike’s tailpipe. Jesus slid off the back as gracefully as he could; Daryl leapt off, and reached into the innards of the bike. 

The garage didn’t belong to any house that Jesus could see. It seemed to be there just for them.

Two dead ones grumbled out of the overgrowth.

Jesus grabbed his knife from his hip. “Walkers.” He remembered that Daryl and Rick had called the dead that. 

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Get ‘em. I got this.”

The first one went down easy, its decayed skull like a rotten watermelon in the sun. The second had once been a very tall man, and Jesus had to jump to reach the head. There was a tiny breath of panic— _not today_ —as it grasped Jesus’ coat in its clawing hands, then it was down too, the knife protruding from its eye socket. Jesus pulled the knife free and wiped it on the ground.

It was so quiet, suddenly. No motorbike rumble, no growls from the dead. Only the eerie song of the cicadas above them in the trees and Daryl’s clunking and muttering with the bike disturbed the wet air.

Jesus walked back to Daryl, who was on his knees in the dirt, wrenching hard with his bare hands at some piece in the bowels of the bike. “Piece a shit, c’mon, c’mon you fucker…”

Jesus crouched next to him. “What is it?”

“Fuel filter,” Daryl grumbled between yanks. “Sons of bitches never changed it. Gets dirty, bike runs bad, fucks the engine if you drive too long with it. Just needs changed but I ain’t got one.”

“So we can’t leave without changing it?”

“We’ll break down. Matter of time.”

“Can we ride without it?”

Daryl wiped his face, leaving black streaks, and looked at Jesus. His blue eyes were a shock against his filthy skin. “Never tried that.”

“Your call.”

“Goddammit!” Daryl suddenly raged, punching the frame of the bike. “Pieces of shit. Gotta fuck up my bike too, after everything else. Pieces of shit!” Another punch, and Daryl’s knuckles bled. That look in his eyes, that feral desperation, the one Daryl had worn while he smashed that man’s head apart, was creeping back.

Jesus carefully laid a hand on Daryl’s arm, half-expecting a punch to his own face. To his surprise, Daryl stilled. 

“This is your bike?”

Daryl was quiet for so long Jesus though he might not have been heard. 

“Yeah. S’mine. Built it myself.”

“That’s impressive.” 

“S’all I’m good at.”

Jesus didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t think Daryl even realized he’d said it.

The cicadas screamed.

“I ain’t right,” Daryl said softly.

“What?”

“Can’t change a fuel filter with my bare hands. Ya can’t, ya need tools. Wrenches." Daryl's voice was faint, drifting. "Ain’t possible. Couldn’t change the thing even if I had another one. I thought…I thought I could.”

Irrational thinking. A little alarming given their current predicament, but more than understandable after whatever hell Daryl had just escaped from. Jesus had seen it, and far worse, among other survivors. Unthinking, he rubbed Daryl’s arm.

“My head ain’t right.” Daryl looked at Jesus. His knuckles dripped blood in the dirt, unheeded. “Why’d I think that?” 

Jesus found himself unnerved by the naked, innocent confusion in Daryl’s eyes. He thought of Daryl before, bristling and snarky, angel wings on his back. Thanking Jesus for saving his life and punching him in the face within a single breath.

That Daryl was still here, somewhere. Forgetting that, treating Daryl like he was fragile or weak, would lose Jesus every inch of this tenuous, confusing, unexpected ground he had gained. Every inch of the arm that still somehow permitted his hand to rest on it. Jesus knew this suddenly, inexplicably, in his bones.

Daryl stared at Jesus still, like Jesus had an answer for all this. 

_This is it. This is the part that isn't easy._

“Well I’m going to go out on a limb here—” Jesus schooled his voice into lightness—“and guess that you’ve had a spectacularly shitty few days.”

Daryl blinked, and blinked, then his eyes sparked with a soft light and he let out a huff of breath, his mouth quirking in what might, on a different day in a different life, have been a smile. 

He held Jesus’ gaze another moment, eyes clear now, then looked back to the bike, slipping his arm from under Jesus’ fingers like he’d never noticed it was there. Jesus silently released the breath he’d been holding.

“We put the rest of the gas in.” Daryl gestured at the red can strapped to the front of the bike. “Run something clean through the line. Best we can do.”

“We can go on foot if we have to.”

They stood. Daryl uncapped the gas can and started filling the tank. He caught Jesus’ eye again, a split second flash of blue amidst his stringy hair. “Hey.”

“What’s up?”

“Don’t let me do that again.”

“Do…”

“If I ain’t acting right.” Daryl set the gas can down and straddled the bike. Rubbed as his sluggishly bleeding fingers, and didn’t meet Jesus’ eyes again. “Stop me. Punch me. I don’t care. Can’t be like that.”

Jesus nodded sincerely. “I won’t. But if you’re expecting me to check you on the fine details of motorcycle maintenance, I might disappoint.” 

Jesus had only a moment to hope for another soft chuckle, a tiny maybe-smile. A rustle of undergrowth was all the warning they got before the bushes around them seemed to explode with the dead. Twenty, maybe more, their jaws snapping hungrily. _Too many._

“Get on!” Daryl shouted as he fired the engine. The bike had already started to roll when Jesus jumped on; his feet landed on the seat, his hands clamped down hard on Daryl’s shoulders. 

“Fuck!” Daryl screamed. 

“What?!”

“Hold my waist,” Daryl gasped through gritted teeth. 

“You all right?” Jesus snatched his hands away and grabbed onto Daryl’s torso. The dead came closer, from all sides, intent now in their stumbling. 

“Hang on!” Daryl gunned the engine and the bike leapt forward. Daryl drove straight through the enclosing wall of the dead, knocking them in all directions. 

———————

They flew now. The trees and fields and homes and the dead blurred around them. The bike coughed occasionally, and ran loud, but it didn’t falter.

Jesus had his arms around Daryl’s middle, his legs folded up inelegantly, his boots resting on some unknown bits protruding from the bowels of the motorcycle. The position was nerve-wracking, balanced so precariously above the road at the punishing speed Daryl kept. It was uncomfortable, awkwardly intimate, pressed against Daryl’s back because there was nowhere else to be. Daryl was soaked in sweat. He smelled rank, unwashed for who knows how long.

_Daryl’s bike._ Daryl had built this bike for himself, and put a seat on it that was only big enough for one.

They rode on. The sun began to dip low in the sky. Jesus gestured left or right to show Daryl the way--quick, frantic gestures before he had to grab Daryl again or risk losing his balance. 

Daryl didn’t speak. Eventually, Jesus was lulled by the passing landscape and the monotonous drone of the engine. 

It took awhile for Jesus to realize that Daryl’s breath was hitching. 

Jesus leaned his head until he could see Daryl’s face in the tiny rear-view mirror mounted on the handlebar. Daryl’s eyes were wide open, too wide. Tears streamed through the grime on his cheeks, and Jesus might have told himself it was from the wind, but for the tremble in Daryl’s lips and the stuttering breaths that gently shook Jesus’ arms where they rested against Daryl’s ribs. 

Jesus felt like an intruder, like he should leave if there was anywhere else he could possibly go. 

In an attempt to offer Daryl a facsimile of privacy, Jesus slowly pulled his arms away from Daryl’s sides. Fisted his hands in the plaid shirt instead.

A twitch shook Daryl’s frame, then he suddenly accelerated, forcing Jesus to clutch Daryl tight again to stop himself toppling to the pavement.

“Five more miles,” Jesus shouted.

Daryl gave a short nod, his hair flying into Jesus’ eyes. His breathing was steady now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> EDIT: I originally planned for more chapters in this story, but after fighting with said chapters for over a month I decided to shelve them for now and work on another Desus story I'm having a much easier time with. So for now this is a one-shot, but I might add to it in the future.


End file.
